74 THE MARINE AQUARIUM. 
the Actinia take precedence of all the ordinary inhabitants 
of the tank, because of their exquisite beauty, strange habits, 
and still more general certainty attending their preservation. 
Actinia mesembryanthemum is the common Smooth 
Anemone which abounds on every part of our coast. Its 
colour varies considerably, but it is usually of a deep, warm 
chocolate, dotted all over with small yellow spots, and when 
closed has the best possible resemblance to a large ripe 
strawberry. Every stone about the sea-beach is studded 
with this anemone, and a collector may secure any required 
number in a few hours, slipping each from its base, and 
dropping the whole into a jar with some fragments of 
fresh wet weed to keep them moist. 
When it expands, a circle of bright blue beads, or 
tubercules, resembling torquoises, is seen just within the 
central opening ; and, as the expansion proceeds, a num- 
ber of coral-like fingers, or tentacles, unfold from the 
centre, and at last spread out on all sides like the hundred 
petals of a Peri flower, reminding one of Hinda’s boon :— 
Be it our’s to embellish thy pillow 
With everything beauteous that grows in the deep ; 
Each flower of the rock, and each gem of the billow, 
Shall sweeten thy bed and illumine thy sleep. 
Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber 
That ever the sorrowing sea-bird has wept, 
With many a shell in whose hollow-wreathed chamber 
We, Peris of Ocean, by moonlight have slept. 
Latta Roouxk. 
This anemone will remain expanded for many days 
together, if the water be kept bright and pure ; but if the 
